iwi – International Women Indiana | logo design
Clients presentation to the board notes | This logo clearly states the acronym for our organisation. It exemplifies strength but it is soft rather than harsh. It has energy moving upwards and outwards and the placement of the ‘i’s suggest support which is integral to the IWI mission. The placement of the significant dots over the ‘i’s intentionally suggests heads to show friends leaning in toward each other. This reinforces the sentiment in the tagline ‘friends across cultures’ and again demonstrates a quality so important to all of us. There is also a touch of whimsy in this design which is appealing.

THE TAGLINE: ‘friends across cultures’ was selected by the committee as capturing the essence of our organisation’s mission of friendship and support, of sharing and learning about cultural diversity. It captures a warmth and informality, a sense of intimacy as well as a global sense of distance across oceans.

THE COLOURS: The colours are dark blue/purple and magenta. The blue/purple is a link to our traditional blue used for the AIW for many years. The purple provides a richness and gives it life whereas the dark blue alone proved rather flat. The magenta is rich and gives a nod to a feminine colour appropriate for a women’s organisation. Together the colours are powerful, strong, stylish and elegant. The colours also work well when printed or copied in black and white.

THE FONTS: The font used for the organisation’s name suggests strength and authority. The font used for the tag line has character, is quietly sophisticated, has movement and contrasts well with the stronger organisational name.

Background: The logo design was for a charitable organisation in Indiana, so budget was key, but also the IWI had a core project team of eight successful, individual women, each with ideas as to what the logo could be like. I briefed them on how to save time on the project, by thinking about key words to describe themselves, and how they wanted people to ‘feel’ about them when they saw the logo. And as I believe that I am a conduit for my clients to realise their own visual look, it was important that as a group, each of their ideas should be aired, and then agreed between them. To demonstrate the wide variety, both a selection of their ideas that I reinterpreted and my own suggestions, I have put together a short video. It may seem an extravagance, but with each idea given equal weight, it was easy for them to see what worked, and what didn’t.

The brief: to design a ‘fresh, crisp’ logo for the ‘International Women Indiana’. The logo should be:

  • vibrant – expresses energy and movement
  • fresh – in the sense of contemporary
  • suggests connecting, sharing, friendship
  • an open design, without a defined border
  • a horizontal design with the name of the organization written in full next to the logo
  • include the tag line ‘Friends across cultures’
Angie is a delightful and talented designer and her patience has known no bounds!
Fran Colley

President, International Women Indiana

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